Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Run-DMSteve and Steven Bryan Bieler with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Don’t make me come out there.

There will never be another Beatles, except for the one time there was

Everyone is always looking for the next Beatles. From The Monkees to The Arctic Monkees, we salivate over any upstart new band that threatens to upset the world as we know it.

They never do. We ain’t gonna see anything like The Beatles and Beatlemania again. There will never be another moment in the Earth Prime timeline as there was in 1963, when unlimited talent met universal need and when there were so few media channels that one message could smack every human in existence.

I’m not suggesting that The Beatles and U2 are equivalent. They are nothing like each other. The Beatles, for example, displayed more humor on any afternoon in 1964 than U2 have in their entire career. The Beatles, for another example, never tried to be rock’s answer to Wagner.

What I am suggesting is that the two bands have similar career trajectories. Here’s my evidence. Ready Steady Go!

The Beatles 1963-64The Beatles’ catalog in their early years is like the cellar of my parents’ house: Good luck finding two things that match. Different Beatles albums with different lineups of songs appeared in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Sea of Tranquility, etc.

Here in the U.S., we had Introducing…The Beatles, then Meet the Beatles! even though we’d already been introduced, then The Beatles Are on the Grass, The Beatles Are in My Hall, The Beatles Are in My Head, etc.

Get rid of all these random collections of songs, hold off on the two soundtracks, and you’re left with Please Please Me, With the Beatles, and Beatles for Sale. This is where The Beatles reimagined pop and changed the world.

U2 1980-83U2 released Boy, October, and War. This is where they reimagined arena rock and tried to change the world, one cause at a time.

The Beatles 1964-65A Hard Day’s Night: The perfect soundtrack.

U2 1983Under a Blood Red Sky: The perfect live album.

The Beatles 1965-66Rubber Soul and Revolver were a great leap forward.

U2 1984The Unforgettable Fire was a great leap forward.

The Beatles 1967Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: Their masterpiece.

U2 1987The Joshua Tree: Their masterpiece.

The Beatles 1967Magical Mystery Tour was a serious expedition into psychedelia.

U2 1993I have to mix up U2’s chronology by one album to make this work. Zooropa was a serious expedition into electronica. You think if The Beatles had lasted into the 1990s, they wouldn’t have explored electronica? Tell that to Paul McCartney, one of the two men behind Strawberries, Oceans, Ships, Forest (1993).

The Beatles 1968The White Album was a lab puppy that doesn’t know how to work all those legs.

U2 1988Rattle & Hum was a lab puppy that doesn’t know how to work all those legs.

The Beatles 1969U2 has nothing like Yellow Submarine. Since there were only four new songs on this disc and of those I only like “It’s All Too Much,” I don’t see this as relevant.

The Beatles 1969Abbey Road demonstrated a new maturity. It’s probably their best album after Sgt. Pepper.

U2 1991Achtung Baby demonstrated a new maturity. It’s probably their best album after The Joshua Tree.

The Beatles 1969-70After Abbey Road and Let It Be, the Beatles ceased to exist.

U2 1995-97After Original Soundtracks and Pop, which were not as good as This Is Spinal Tap or Meet the Rutles, U2 almost ceased to exist.

That is the theory that I have and which is mine, and what it is too.

Bonus: U2 go into extra innings

U2 is a fading empire that refuses to die without a fight. As a service to my loyal readers (all three of them), and because I did the same for Duran Duran, here’s my guide to the 10 essential U2 songs since Zooropa. You can conveniently forget everything else they’ve done since 1993.

“All Because of You”
U2’s version of playing “Get Back” on the roof of Apple Studios. Bono kisses a girl!

“Beautiful Day”
This song belongs in a temple to a new religion. Features the first-ever Bono double. He’s good-bad, but he’s not evil (see “Elevation” below).

“Do You Feel Loved”Curtis Mayfield funky. This is one ballpark I didn’t think they could play in.

“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”
The first cut from the Batman Forever soundtrack. If you love comics, you’ll swoon over this video. The music could knock your croquet ball over the house and down the street.

“Elevation”Good U2 battle Evil U2 while The Edge tries to survive in a Tomb Raider movie!

“Original of the Species”The horns are straight out of Magical Mystery Tour. Unfortunately, the video is dull and, well, pretentious.

“Unknown Caller”The only U2 song I know where they chant the lyrics. Kind of pretentious, but that’s their natural habitat. It’s grown on me.

“You’re the Best Thing About Me”It’s not a great song – it sounds as if it were recorded by four guys who’ve listened to a lot of U2 – but I include it because it’s the happiest U2 video of all time. And almost none of them are happy.

Dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Judy, whose ambition in her 50s was to jump out of a cake on The Edge’s birthday.

Fun post. With the new U2 release it’s cool to see people actually making insightful criticism and comments on them! Might have to fire up back catalogue today at work. Because I must share music stuff I love and enjoy, if you haven’t heard Song Exploder, Switched On Pop and Dissect podcasts check them out – I’m loving them and need to find more in this vein, please share if you know of any. If you check them out let me know what you think!

Defno! Thanks for the info. I didn’t know anything about these podcasts. Song Exploder is my kind of thing! Probably more reliable than Internet Exploder, too. Thank you!!

It just figures that U2 would release a new album while I was writing this post. Prince did that to me three times in 2014 when I was trying to write about every album he ever recorded. Some people!

For Beatles experts, particularly one in Seattle, forgive me for forgetting Let It Be and getting the year wrong for Abbey Road. What can I say, I had about 30 albums to sort through. Let It Be came to me in a dream last night…actually, it came to me during my morning commute while I was listening to Marvin Gaye. I have amended the post. Run-DMSteve regrets these errors.